Friday, May 20, 2011

When I wrote a post about two Pakistanis’ desire to scale the Mt Everest or the Mt Chomolungma as the Chinese call it, I was rather skeptical. And then when as days went by and there was no news, I thought my fears to be right. But that was not to be so. On 11th May, the dream of one of the two Pakistanis came true when he finally stood at the top of the world.

Hassan Sidhpara had his dream of reaching at the top of the world. What makes his climb special and unique is that he did it without oxygen – something that requires extreme guts and very high standard of physical fitness as oxygen is so thin at Mt Everest that is is extremely difficult to breathe. He became the second Pakistani to have achieved this honour, Nazir Sabir being the first who scaled Everest on 17th May 2000.

The expedition was sponsored by the Alpine Club of Pakistan and had the patronage of the president of Pakistan. The team comprising of three climbers left for Nepal in the last week of March earlier this year and established their base camp III at 7,200 metres overlooked by the gigantic Everest.

The other two members of the team, Mohammad Sadiq and Ghulam Muhammad Faisal could not materialize their dream of scaling Everest. But a determined Hassan from Baltistan province of Pakistan continued despite all odds against him and finally scaled the highest peak of the world at stood at 8,848 metre. Standing by the Pakistani national flag he hoisted atop the peak, Hassan Sidhpara had created a world record for not using oxygen for his climb to the top of the world. A great feat accomplished with pure determination and guts by a man living by his dream.